Ontario race remains between PCs and NDP

A new poll was released on Friday showing that the Ontario Liberals are in dire straits, no matter who takes over the party. And that means that, for the time being, the real contest is between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats.

Forum was last in the field in Ontario on Sept. 25, and since then the Tories were unchanged at 37% support. The New Democrats were down three points to 32% while the Liberals were up two points to 22%.

The Greens were unchanged at 7% support.

Whereas the last poll from Forum showed a gap between the PCs and NDP that was within the margin of error, this poll gave the Tories a statistically significant lead. But that significance does not extend to any region of the province except eastern Ontario - all the others are close enough to give us an indication of only who is probably ahead, rather than definitively.

The disparity between men and women in this poll is telling. The Tories held a 43% to 29% lead over the NDP among men but the NDP was up five points (35% to 30%) among women. The New Democrats will need to close the gap among male voters in order to put themselves back in a dead heat with the Tories.

But there is something to note about this poll, similar to what I highlighted in Forum's last federal poll. The real problem is that Forum does not included unweighted and weighted samples in their reports (and they are not alone), which makes it difficult to determine what is actually going on. For instance, Forum says on one of its charts that the number of undecideds in this poll was 13%. But it also says that the total sample was 1,102 Ontarians and that, on the voting intentions question, the sample of respondents was 1,047. If the numbers of undecideds is really 13%, then the number of decided/leaning respondents who answered the voting intentions question should have been 959.

And on the question of how respondents voted in the last election, the numbers are off of the actual results - most strongly for the New Democrats, who were five points below their election result. By my rough calculation of Forum's numbers, if the sample was weighted by past voting behaviour the PC lead would be reduced to three points instead of five. But perhaps Forum is already taking this into account in their final numbers. When I asked if that was the case, I was told that this information is proprietary. That is certainly their prerogative, but it doesn't clear things up much.

Another interesting thing to note is that if you add up the sample sizes of how people said they voted in the last election, you end up with 1,008, or 96% of 1,047. In other words, 96% of respondents said they voted in the last election. That means that the sample Forum compiled either has a lot of fibbers (turnout was 49%) or a lot of forgetful people, and that it is probably not representative of the entire population. It might be representative of the voting population, though.

With the numbers in this poll, the Progressive Conservatives would likely win a majority government of around 60 seats, with strong results in rural Ontario but also a few pick-ups in Toronto as well. The New Democrats would win 37 seats and the Liberals only 10, nine of them in and around Toronto.

The poll also included some information on how Ontarians would vote depending on who was leading the party. Forum reported their numbers with the undecideds still included, but if we remove them we get the following results:

Gerard Kennedy - 24%
Eric Hoskins - 19%
Kathleen Wynne - 18%
Glen Murray - 18%
Sandra Pupatello - 17%
Deb Matthews - 17%
Charles Sousa - 15%

The poll also included Laurel Broten, but she has ruled herself out. What the poll suggests is that only Kennedy would improve the Liberals' current numbers, while they would fall with all of the others. Undoubtedly, this is due to Kennedy being a higher profile candidate. The others on the list are not nearly as well known, but their numbers would likely improve somewhat if they actually became leader.

This leaders question actually shows that the real swing voter in Ontario right now is on the fence between the New Democrats and the Liberals. The numbers hardly budged for the Tories no matter who was on the ballot, but those lower-performing Liberals added to the NDP's tally. It would seem to suggest that the Liberals would do better with a left-wing candidate (like Kennedy or Wynne) rather than one from the right (like Pupatello). But, in the end, if the Liberals get themselves back into a competitive position they will need to win votes from the Tories as well.

As of writing, Glen Murray is the only candidate officially in the race for the Liberal leadership. That list will likely get much longer very soon. How it all plays out between now and January, and then how the new leader will do in the short time before the next election, will be interesting to see.

Conservatives slip in Forum poll

A new poll by Forum Research for The National Post made a splash this week, as it showed that the Liberals under Justin Trudeau would have a 10-point lead and be in the running for a majority. The far more interesting story, though, was the close three-way race that Forum identified in their non-Trudeau numbers. For a more condensed take on this poll, check out my article for The Huffington Post Canada here.

Forum was last in the field on Sept. 26, and since then New Democrats picked up two points to reach 32%, putting them narrowly ahead of the Conservatives. The Tories dropped four points to 31% while the Liberals were up two points to 27%.

The Bloc Québécois had 6% support and the Greens were up one point to 4%.

A few things are worth pointing out with this poll. Forum's report (and, as a result, the Post's) erroneously says that the margin of error is +/- 2%. A sample of 1,735 actually has a margin of error of +/- 2.4%. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this was a typo on their part.

But the field date for this poll was Oct. 27. That was a Saturday. Pollsters usually avoid polling on Saturdays since people are less likely to be home, making the type of person who picks up the phone on a Saturday less representative of the entire population. Polling on a weekend during an election campaign or as part of a multi-day poll is more common place, but this snap-shot Saturday poll is quite unusual. (The first commenter to claim that the poll disproportionately under-estimates Conservative support because their voters are "outside playing with their children" loses - the last poll from Abacus Data showed little difference in voting intentions between households with and households without children in them.)

Lastly, the numbers reported by Forum on how respondents voted in the 2011 federal election are problematic. They show a vote share of 35% for the Tories (five points below the actual result), 27% for the NDP (-4), 25% for the Liberals (+6), 6% for the Bloc (correct), 5% for the Greens (+1), and 3% for other parties (+2). Memory can be faulty, of course, and is only worth so much considering how many provincial elections have taken place since May 2011. These are likely also the unweighted numbers before correcting for demographics and regional distribution, but we do not know. As is the case with too many pollsters in Canada, there is no detail in the report about what the raw data looked like and how it was weighted.

In terms of the results, only the four-point drop for the Conservatives was statistically significant, and while the gap between the NDP and Tories is insignificant, the gap between the Liberals and Tories is not. In other words, the poll strongly suggests that the Liberals are in fact in third place and that this poll does not represent a sort of three-way tie. But it is very close.

The Conservatives led in Alberta with 60%, followed by the Liberals at 18% and the NDP at 15%. The Tories also had the edge in Ontario at 36% to the NDP's 32% and the Liberals' 28%.

The New Democrats were ahead in Quebec with 31% and were trailed by the Liberals at 29% and the Bloc at 21%. They also had the advantage in British Columbia with 38%, while the Conservatives were down 16 points to 27% and the Liberals came up third with 26%. The Greens were up six points to 8%. The NDP also had the edge in the Prairies with 48% (+15), followed by the Tories at 35% and the Liberals at 15%.

The Liberals were in front in Atlantic Canada with 37%, narrowly edging out the NDP at 36%. The Conservatives were down 12 points to 22%.

With these numbers, the Conservatives would squeak out a bare plurality with 124 seats on the boundaries of the proposed 338-seat map. The New Democrats would win 118 seats, the Liberals 88, the Bloc Québécois seven, and the Greens one.

The NDP lost out on the chance to come out on top in the seat count due to the Tories' advantage (in both votes and geography) in Ontario and the close race in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. But with a combined 206 seats, the Liberals and NDP could likely come to some agreement.

The results of the poll with Trudeau as leader follow the same trend as other surveys. Hypothetical as they may be, they do indicate a weakness in the NDP's numbers as the Liberals steal from their pockets of support very easily.

With Trudeau as leader, the Liberals would take 39% of the vote, a gain of 12 points. Two of those come from the Tories (bumped down to 29%) and eight of them come from the New Democrats (who drop to 24%). Trudeau's presence also hurts the Greens, as their support is cut in half from 4% to 2%.

This Liberal bump occurs throughout Canada: three points in Alberta, 12 points in Ontario, 13 points in Quebec and the Prairies, and 15 points in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia. And most of it comes from the NDP, who drop four points in Alberta, eight in Ontario and Quebec, 10 in Atlantic Canada, 11 in British Columbia, and 13 in the Prairies. The Tories also take a hit, but they lose no more than four points in any one region (Quebec).

As a result, they still remain very competitive and would likely win 110 seats with these numbers. The Liberals would win 156, 14 short of a majority, while the New Democrats would win 60, the Bloc 11, and the Greens one. More than four out of every five Liberal seats are won east of Manitoba, while the Conservatives win half of theirs west of Ontario.

Again, these hypothetical numbers are worth very little in terms of telling us about how the Liberals will do under Justin Trudeau. But, as I have said before, they speak more to the lack of attachment between the NDP and a lot of their new supporters. It is worrisome when the NDP loses 25% of their supporters just because Trudeau is mentioned, while the Conservatives only lose 6% of theirs. The idea that Justin Trudeau would easily win the next election based on these hypothetical polls can be dismissed quite easily, but this under-lying problem for the NDP cannot.